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Obama: US, region share responsibility for refugees By JOSH LEDERMAN ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is telling Central American presidents that the United States and the wider region share responsibility to address an influx of mi-
nors and families who are crossing the southwest border of the U.S. He says they all have to deter the flow of children across the border because the situation is putting the children and their families at risk. Obama and Vice President
Joe Biden met at the White House with the presidents of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. Obama said children without a proper claim to stay will be returned to their countries. He said the U.S. will turn back border crossers not be-
cause of a lack of compassion but because the U.S. is a nation of laws. Meanwhile, House Republicans tried to agree on their own proposed solution to the crisis at the Mexican border.
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BORDER SAFETY
DANGEROUS RIVER JOB Deterrence is a goal, challenge By CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN ASSOCIATED PRESS
MISSION — Three heavily armed Texas patrol boats rounded a bend in the Rio Grande on a recent afternoon and came upon two young men paddling an inflatable raft fullspeed ahead toward the Mexican shore. The state troopers and game wardens bobbed helplessly in their boats as the men passed their raft and paddles up the bank to others, and a crew of troopers peeked through the tall reeds on the U.S. side for whatever load had just been deposited. It was illustrated the limitations U.S. agencies face in deterring smugglers at the Texas border in the face of Gov. Rick Perry’s recent announcement to send as many as 1,000 National Guard troops down. Combined, the two gunboats from the state’s Department of Public Safety and one from the Parks and Wildlife Department
Photos by Eric Gay/pool | AP
Texas Department of Safety Troopers patrol on the Rio Grande along the U.S.-Mexico border on Thursday, in Mission. Texas is spending $1.3 million a week for a bigger DPS presence along the border. carried 2,400 horsepower and 15 .30-caliber machine guns — indisputably the most advanced craft on the Rio Grande. But they were foiled Thursday by an 8-foot raft and smugglers’ scouts who track their movements from the moment the patrols hit water. A short time earlier when the patrol boats passed in the opposite direction, two men — likely scouts — had stood in the same
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ASSOCIATED PRESS
AUSTIN — Young adults who grew up in Texas’ foster care system recounted harrowing stories of abuse and emotional trauma Thursday for members of a legislative committee looking for ways to better protect such children. Some choked back tears during a hearing of the Texas House Select Committee on Child Protection, and chairwoman Dawnna Dukes said what she heard made foster care sometimes sound “like prison.” The state’s 17,000-child foster system has been under intense scrutiny since seven children died of abuse or neglect in fiscal year 2013. Another three died “in kinship care,” after being assigned to live with relatives. This year, one foster child has died, but officials are still investigating two siblings in foster care, ages 4 and 6, who drowned July 6 in Lake Georgetown, near Austin. An outside review found child protective caseworkers only spend 26 percent of their job meeting with youngsters and families. Lena Francis, now 20, testified that she was in foster care in Houston from birth until age 7 — then adopted. She said she was often locked in a dark room for hours and prohibited from eating or drinking. “These agencies, they don’t know what happens. And how can you report that because, at the end of the day, you’ve still got to go home with that person?” Francis said, her voice cracking. Francis said Texas should mandate drug testing for potential foster and adoptive parents, as well as institute random visits to homes where children are placed. “For the most part, we’re being abused,” Francis said. “I want people to be held accountable.” Roshaude Williams, 23, said he was in foster care until age 19 and lived in twodozen homes around Texas. He said foster parents put him on medications he didn’t need because state funding increased for youngsters with medical problems — and that he eventually attempted suicide by walking into traffic. “I guess it’s all right now, but I’ve had 20-something jobs,” Williams said. “I can’t hold one down.” John Specia, commissioner of the De-
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MIGRANT CHILDREN
Turning point for Central Am. minors was ’12 Editor’s note: This is part two of a three-part series on warnings of an influx of immigrant children into the United States.
By DAVID NAKAMURA, JERRY MARKON AND MANUEL ROIG-FRANZIA THE WASHINGTON POST
Federal officials by 2012 found the number of adults and famlies illegally entering the United States from El Salvador, Guatema-
la and Honduras began to grow rapidly. The number of Central American minors making the trip without their parents — who are afforded greater protections under a 2008 U.S. anti-trafficking law — was a subset of the larger phenomenon, officials said. “It was more than it had been, but it wasn’t something that would cause you to sort of drop everything and say we’re in a cri-
sis,” said a person familiar with internal deliberations. In Texas and in Central America, officials viewed the situation with greater alarm. In April 2012, the first ladies of Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala voiced their concerns at a conference in Washington on unaccompanied minors. “The statistics are worrisome,” said Guatemala’s Rosa Maria Leal de Perez. A week later, Texas Gov. Rick
Perry, a Republican, wrote a blistering letter to Obama, citing a 90 percent increase over the previous year in the number unaccompanied minors arriving from Central America. If the president failed “to take immediate action to return these minors to their countries of origin and prevent and discourage others from coming here, the federal government is perpetuating the problem,” Perry wrote. “Every day of delay risks more
lives. Every child allowed to remain encourages hundreds more to attempt the journey.” Inside the Obama administration, officials at the Department of Homeland Security were focusing most of their efforts on adults. Janet Napolitano, then secretary of homeland security, implored her counterparts in Mexico to increase border security to reduce
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